Taipei prosecutors yesterday seized money and property belonging to Wu Shih-tsai (吳思材), a suspect in the diplomatic fraud scandal, on the grounds that they came from money Wu allegedly embezzled from the government.
Wu was a middleman in the scandal in which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) was allegedly defrauded of US$30 million while seeking to forge diplomatic ties with Papua New Guinea in 2006.
Wu was detained by the Taipei District Court on May 6.
Taipei prosecutors seized two luxurious residences in Tianmu (天母) as well as the contents of Wu’s bank accounts, worth a total of about US$4.5 million.
Prosecutors discovered Wu wired US$4.5 million from Singapore to Taiwan in January and used the money to buy the two residences.
Meanwhile, police in Taipei charged Wu yesterday with malicious accusation in connection with a fake death threat.
On May 3, Wu told a press conference that a man with a gun had threatened him after he left his attorney’s office in Taipei, where he had been discussing the fund scandal.
Wu said a man on the road pointed the gun at him and warned him to leave the country soon.
Police said they checked the surveillance cameras in the area Wu mentioned, but did not see anyone threatened him with a pistol.
They said Wu later admitted to fabricating the story because he was concerned about his security and wanted police bodyguards.
The foreign ministry wired US$30 million into an account in Singapore on Sept. 14, 2006, which was to be used as “technical aid” for Papua New Guinea in the hope of forging diplomatic ties.
The scandal came to light on May 1 when a Singaporean newspaper reported that the Singapore High Court had approved Taiwan’s application for an injunction to freeze a bank account held jointly by Wu and Ching Chi-jiu (金紀玖).
COLLABORATION: As TSMC is building an advanced wafer fab in Dresden, Germany, it needs to build a comprehensive supply chain in Europe, Joseph Wu said Taiwan is planning to team up with the Czech Republic to build a semiconductor cluster in the European country, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said on Friday. Wu, who led a Taiwanese delegation at the annual GLOBSEC Forum held in Prague from Friday to today, said in a news conference that Taiwan seeks to foster cooperation between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and its counterparts in Czechia. Such cooperation is expected to transform the country into one of the most important semiconductor clusters in Europe over the next three to five years, he added. As TSMC is building an advanced
A joint declaration by Pacific leaders was reissued yesterday morning with mentions of Taiwan removed after China slammed an earlier version as a “mistake” that “must be corrected.” After five days of talks in Tonga, a “cleared” communique was released on Friday that reaffirmed a 30-year-old agreement allowing Taiwan to take part in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). However, the wording immediately raised the ire of Chinese diplomats, who piled pressure on Pacific leaders to amend the document. The forum reissued the communique without explanation yesterday morning, conspicuously deleting the paragraph concerning the bloc’s “relations with Taiwan.” “It must be a
China lacks the ability to “fully” invade Taiwan as it does not have the equipment, but is bringing online advanced new weapons and has other options to threaten Taiwan, such as inspecting foreign cargo ships, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said yesterday. In an annual threat assessment of China sent to lawmakers, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, the ministry said Beijing continues to hone skills such as joint command operations. “However, the use of tactics and strategies against Taiwan is still limited by the natural geographical environment of the Taiwan Strait and insufficient landing equipment and logistic capabilities,”
A tropical depression in waters east of the Philippines could develop into a tropical storm as soon as today and bring rainfall as it approaches, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday, while issuing heat warnings for 14 cities and counties. Weather model simulations show that there are still considerable differences in the path that the tropical depression is projected to take. It might pass through the Bashi Channel to the South China Sea or turn northeast and move toward the sea south of Japan, CWA forecaster Yeh Chih-chun (葉致均) said, adding that the uncertainty of its movement is still high,